Though I’ve been quite prolific recently, one way or another, I always seem to be involved in what I’m realising just may be a lifetime process of figuring out just what kind of artist I am.

With work ranging from camera-less (and, just occasionally, camera-assisted) photography, writing, cast and fused glass and illuminated etching to tree mandalas, house-sized earth-pigment murals and a soupçon of mainly secret songwriting, I sometimes end up oscillating between the ‘time-to-focus-on-one-modality’ view, and the ‘embrace-all-the-seemingly-disparate-strands-as-they’re-beginning-to-form-a-coherent-world’ one.

I’m beginning to feel more at home with the second option, which requires a deeper faith, both in myself and in life itself...as well as continual experimentation with ways to hone in on points of focus within this expansive view so it doesn’t all disperse into the void, stay hovering on the surface or disappear down irrelevant tangents.

Whatever my medium, I like to think of myself as an illustrator in the original sense of the word as one who illuminates. In this light, here’s a moving illustration I’ve just uploaded...more commonly known as a music video. When I recorded contemporary troubadour Oisin playing this song ~ one of his epic ballads ~ at Rennaldburn last Summer, at a fireside Mabon celebration, I knew it was something I’d like to try to do justice to.